


Stitches

by elbowsinsidethedoor



Category: The Punisher (TV 2017)
Genre: M/M, Post season finale
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-15
Updated: 2018-02-15
Packaged: 2019-03-17 23:28:42
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 592
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13669530
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elbowsinsidethedoor/pseuds/elbowsinsidethedoor
Summary: Set in the same world as Scary, Beautiful. Could be read as a continuation of it. It's based more on what I felt between the characters than an attempt to be faithful to canon.





	Stitches

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Lady_Egotuus](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lady_Egotuus/gifts).



David assesses the long cut over Frank’s eyebrow. They’re crowded into the tiny bathroom of the Hoboken walk-up; Frank on the toilet and David practically on top of him. He's frowning at the bloody gash, studying its edges. He hates sewing human flesh but not as much as he hates the thought of Frank carelessly disfiguring himself.

“Fuck you, Lieberman.” It’s muttered low, no sting to it. “I coulda had it done by now.”

He’s given in, but David figures he has to let it be known he doesn’t need this help. That’s fine with him as long as Frank sits still and lets himself be taken care of. He concentrates on stitching the wound closed as neatly as possible over the swollen brow. There’s no flinching from his touch, from the bite of the needle or tug of stitching. The opposite. Frank’s eyes close and his breathing evens out as if the small hurt of being sewn up soothes him.

“You,” David says, tying off the final knot and snipping the thread, “should have more consideration for others, Frank. We’re the ones who have to look at you.” This earns a sullen smile.

“You’re still tracking me … aren’t you.”

He doesn’t deny it. “Of course I am. And you’re still … being you.”

Frank looks up at him then and David feels a weird combination of heat in his groin and ache in his heart. He doesn’t pity Frank but sometimes what he sees, under the level of blood and bruises, reaches out to grab him.

“Something you want to say to me.” Frank seems on the verge of challenging him, testing the water. "About the sanctity of human life. How the police could have stopped that guy.”

David knows who Frank killed, and why. What he wants to say is, I love you. The words cross his mind but he doesn’t speak them; they’ll be too hard for Frank to hear right now. Later David can say it, after, when Frank is better able to handle tenderness.

The old debates are dead. Sanctity of life. That ship sailed so long ago, he thinks it must be halfway around the world by now. One of many arguments torn to shreds between them in the violent, nearly fatal days underground; a time David sometimes thinks of as their courtship.

He’s not here to argue with Frank. He shakes his head slowly, steadily meeting the dark gaze. He knows Frank Castle doesn’t kill recklessly, indiscriminately. He wouldn’t be standing in front of him, alive and breathing (with the beginnings of a hard-on) if that were true.

Frank’s features are softening now that he sees there’s no lecture coming. His hands climb the outsides of David’s thighs to his hips, thumbs curving in close to rub near his cock without touching it. He leans in and crushes his lips to the growing erection he’s trapped between his thumbs.

The muted feel of it is frustrating, in a good way that makes David harder. Open-mouthed, Frank is running his teeth over him. His head moves this way and that to rub his cheek on him like a cat marking territory. As if he needed to be marked; he totally belongs to him.

In bed, it's Frank who speaks up in the dazed aftermath, when David is half asleep.

"You realize it's February 14th?"

A day halfway through a cold month ... then it registers.

"Guess that makes you my valentine, Frank."

"Damn right," he says, soft and sweet, and David is the one broken wide by tenderness.


End file.
